The Association of Irish Composers was one of the beneficiaries of the Arts Council's 1998 response to the dearth of contemporary music performance in Ireland, writes Michael Dervan. The outcome is to be a series of four Sunday at Noon concerts in the Hugh Lane Gallery over the first four Sundays of November. AIC's activities in the past have tended to be committee-planned. In a welcome development, this new series has been masterminded by a solo composer, AIC member Siobhan Cleary, and will concentrate on works "that are considered important in the context of composition in the second half of the 20th century".

The Hugh Lane series, which is also supported by IMRO, will give Dubliners their first opportunity to sample in concert the extraordinary, dark world of Russian recluse Galina Ustvolskaya. Other international figures represented include Iannis Xenakis, Morton Feldman, Krzysztof Penderecki, Luciano Berio, Gyorgy Kurtag and Betsy Jolas. Among the Irish composers featured are Gerald Barry, Raymond Deane, Fergus Johnston, Andrew Synnott, John McLachlan, Paul Hayes, Ann Hoban and Cleary herself.